Chapter 14 Baz
BAZ
The instinctive urge to fight that roared up from inside Baz shocked him. He had never felt anything like it.
It was like some other force took him over for a moment.
He had to straighten out his lip from a snarl, fight down the bear inside him. He had never been so close to an involuntary shift before.
Even when he got himself firmly locked down, he could sense his bear inside him, close to the surface in a way he had rarely experienced.
The stranger was the same one who had spoken to them at the campfire the other night.
His dark hair was plastered to his face, his fur and leather clothes matted with water and mud.
One muscular arm tucked Fern’s head against his chest. He didn’t back down from Baz, instead looking back with eyes that gleamed gold in the way of a shifter who was close to a shift.
Keeping Arden behind him, Baz stepped forward. “Release her,” he snarled. “She is one of mine.”
“Then you need to do better at watching out for yours,” the stranger growled back. He jerked his chin to indicate a direction. “I found her by the old well. She looked as if she had slipped and hit her head. In moments the current would have caught her. She was in danger of drowning.”
“Maybe someone else hit her in the head,” Baz retorted. “You, for example.”
A metallic shimmer flashed in the stranger’s eyes. “If I hurt her, why would I be returning her to you?”
Arden touched Baz’s arm. She remained behind him, keeping him between her and the forest shifter, but she seemed more cautious than truly afraid.
Certainly not as afraid as she ought to be.
“I think he’s telling the truth, Baz. If he meant any harm to Fern, he could easily have taken her away with him, or—or anything else he wanted to do. I think he’s trying to help.”
Baz glanced down at her. Arden’s hair was slicked down with rain. She was human, soft and helpless against a shifter’s claws and strength.
Except she was far from helpless; he was learning that. Whatever she was running away from, she had gotten herself here, kept herself safe.
And he trusted her judgment. Perhaps more than he trusted his own at the moment.
His vicious, protective reaction to the strange shifter still astonished him.
It was pure instinct: Get away and Mine and Leave them alone.
And he still felt it; he had to struggle to keep his bear contained and not simply fling himself at the other shifter and take Fern away from him.
But part of being an alpha, he was starting to realize, was controlling that side of himself. Using it, channeling it, protecting his clan without becoming an unholy asshole in the process.
He still didn’t like or trust this guy, though Baz supposed that the forest clan intruder got a few points in his favor for standing his ground as Baz approached him, bristling.
The stranger held Baz’s gaze a lot longer than was polite for shifters who weren’t openly engaging in a dominance standoff, with the golden glimmer of his shift animal flickering in his eyes.
But he dropped his stare, reluctantly, a bare instant before Baz would have been forced to put him in his place.
First Declan and now this guy.
“Give her to me,” Baz ordered.
The stranger at least didn’t hesitate on that, depositing Fern into Baz’s arms. He looked down at the pale, still face of his not-quite-sister, not-quite-cousin.
She felt almost as light as when they were children, even with her dress sodden with water.
He could see blood around the edge of her hairline, mixing with rainwater.
“Is she badly hurt? We need to get her inside and warm her up.” Arden had come up behind him, following him as if she trusted him perfectly to protect her from the forest shifter. Which Baz had every intention of doing, but he still didn’t like having her this close.
The other shifter, however, took a few quick steps back, as if understanding that Baz didn’t want him too close to Baz’s clan—his family.
“What’s your name?” Arden asked, and Baz was abruptly aware that he hadn’t even wondered.
The only thing he had thought about this strange shifter was foreign and enemy, his entire self given over to the instinctive urge to protect his clan against an intruder.
But Arden, being human, in that moment saw more than he did.
The stranger hesitated. And then he answered her.
“My name is River of Silver Mountain Clan.” He smiled a little. “We call you Sun-Hair.”
“Um?” Arden began, but then River looked sharply to the side.
If he’d had ears, they would have pricked.
Baz’s own threat sense skyrocketed, but a moment later Lexie appeared out of the rain.
He hadn’t heard or smelled her, with the flood thundering behind him and the air filled with the wet, fresh smell of rain and mud.
“Baz!” Lexie called. “Arden! Good, I found you. We didn’t see any sign of Fern downstream, but Declan shifted and he’s checking out the—”
She broke off sharply at the sight of Fern in Baz’s arms. In that same instant, Baz realized River had taken advantage of the moment of distraction to step back among the trees and vanish.
“Damn it!” Baz snarled. “Arden, did you see where he went?”
“No.” Arden moved even closer to Baz, which meant she was pleasantly pressed up against his side. She cautiously stroked Fern’s wet hair. “Is that bad?”
“I don’t know! I don’t like having that guy running around here when the clan’s not all together.”
Lexie joined them and also put her hand on Fern’s forehead, then her neck. “She’s freezing. Baz, what happened?”
“I don’t know what happened!” Baz snapped. His usual easygoing calm had disintegrated under the pressure of his clan’s danger and his bear’s uncharacteristic defensive rage. “That guy who was at the bonfire showed up carrying her. He said he found her—” He paused.
“By the old well,” Arden supplied.
“The wishing well?” Lexie asked.
“I don’t know. Here, I want you to take her.” Baz carefully transferred Fern into Lexie’s arms. “You said Declan is doing—uh—the thing he does?”
Lexie nodded as she adjusted her grip on Fern, resting her clan-sister’s head against her chest.
Well, Declan would be fine as long as he could manage to stay out of sight.
With all the rain, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem, but Baz needed to have a talk with him later.
Knowing that the wild forest shifters were hanging around the town’s borders to this extent, Declan had better be damn careful if he wanted his secret shift form to remain a secret.
“Get Fern inside and get her warmed up,” Baz told Lexie. “Arden, go with her.”
Arden turned swiftly, jerking her hand back from Fern’s damp forehead. “What? Where are you going?”
“Checking the perimeter. I need to make sure the flood’s not going to threaten us and that guy’s really gone.”
“I’m coming with you,” Arden said firmly.
“No. Go with Lexie. It’s safer.”
“Look, guys,” Lexie said. “I’m not going to stand here holding my injured friend while you fight. I’m taking her to my place; it’s closest, and we have lights and heat. If you see Declan, send him my way.”
She turned and slogged away through the rain, hunching over Fern to try to keep some of it off her.
Baz’s newly awakened alpha sense tore him in two directions. Go with them. Stay here to check around and make sure the situation was safe.
How could Uncle Alec, the clan alpha back on the Pinerock ranch, stand to feel like this all the time?
Arden touched his arm. “I feel safer with you. Please, let’s just look around, and then we’ll both go back and make sure Fern is okay.”
He had to admit that having Arden where he could keep an eye on her made his bear feel better about the situation. “All right. But stay close to me. I want to look at the place where that River guy found Fern, make sure he’s not still hanging around.”
And also, not incidentally, to check for any signs that Fern’s “accident” had been engineered by someone else. Someone, say, who wanted to ingratiate themselves into Baz’s clan by returning their lost clanmate to them.
“Do you know what he meant when he called me Sun-Hair?” Arden asked. She stayed close to Baz, nearly plastering herself to his side.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s the blonde in your hair.” He loved those streaks, the shine that never quite took it over. Like veins of gold in granite rock.
“No, I mean, why do they have a name for me?”
“Maybe they give nicknames to everyone.” But he didn’t like it either. The forest shifters were watching them way too closely for comfort.
The creek thundered alongside them, and muddy water swirled around their feet, flowing through the grass and tree roots.
Baz placed himself between Arden and the main channel.
With water everywhere, it was hard to tell where the deeper places might be.
He was confident that he would be fine if he fell in (all he had to do was turn into a bear; he could easily swim out), but Arden wouldn’t be.
She took his hand, her small, chilled fingers sliding into his. Baz found himself reliving the warmth of her lips on his.
“What are you really doing out here?” she asked him. She had to speak up to be heard over the floodwaters, but there was no one else to hear. Just the thunder of the water and the white noise of the rain.
“I don’t know.”
It was strange to be able to admit that out loud.
Part of securing his precarious place as clan leader was faking a clarity of thought and purpose that he didn’t feel.
There was no place in his life for uncertainty or doubt.
He had to look like he knew what he was doing, or the others, especially Declan, would step up and fill the perceived leadership void.
“But I was telling the truth about keeping them safe. And you.” You most of all. But that, he couldn’t yet say out loud.
“Oh,” Arden breathed. She moved closer to him, holding his hand more tightly. Then she raised her other hand and pointed through the rain. “Is that the well that River was talking about?”
It was. It had to be.
Baz could see why none of them had been able to find the wishing well before.
What had once been a lovely meadow was now a thicket of blackberry canes and young trees.
The well was only visible now because most of the brush had been beaten down by the flood waters flowing all around it, revealing a distinctive outline tangled in thorny vines and shrubs.
But that was definitely it. Beneath the blackberry canes, Baz recognized the shape of the wishing well’s old-fashioned roof with the decorative carvings, and the end of its bucket winding handle protruding from what was otherwise a tangle of vines.
If River was telling the truth about finding Fern here, no wonder he’d said she was in danger of being swept into the flood.
Baz could see how she might have lost her balance, clambering through the tangled branches and slippery tree roots to get closer to the well.
He honestly couldn’t even figure out how River had found her in the first place.
And why the heck was she out here in a storm like this?
He looked down at Arden, who was gazing around curiously, her hand clutching his.
“Arden,” he said, and she looked up at him swiftly. “This would be easier if I could use my shifter senses. Do you mind if I shift?”